


Strained Heart For Sale

by Lunaraen



Category: MCSM, Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunaraen/pseuds/Lunaraen
Summary: Magnus and Ellegaard have been through a lot, as teammates and best friends and more, and not all of it's been great. They've had their fair share of pain. It turns out, though, that 'becoming' heroes, and losing Ivor, hurts more than anything else.Who knew selling their souls would have consequences?(Ah, that's right- Ivor did.)
Relationships: Ellegaard the Redstone Engineer/Magnus the Rogue
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Strained Heart For Sale

It feels like it's just the two of them on the roof, only the occasional noise coming from the new settlement below- little more than a camp but growing by the day with more and more followers eager to greet and behold their heroes- and the much closer trees as their branches sway in the wind. The moon hangs high in a clear sky colored by swirls of stars and brighter spots, ones that Ellegaard can name as specific planets.

(Nerd.)

It's _wrong_.

It's a storybook night meant for storybook heroes. _The Order of the Stone_.

(Who came up with that dumb name? Soren? Ellegaard?

Was it is his own drunken suggestion?)

It's a beautiful night in all the ways it shouldn't be, in all the ways it _has no right_ to be, and Magnus internally curses the nice night as he passes Ellie the cigarette they've been sharing.

And if Ivor were still here, he'd make a stink about the cig, the way Ellegaard normally does. But Ivor isn't here, is he? That's the whole reason things are fucked up like they are, why they're hurting in all the wrong ways inside. Instead, _Magnus_ is here, and he figures it's better the devil he knows, the sick taste of cigarettes and the lung damage that inevitably comes with it in place of the burn of whiskey and the spiral into one drunken blackout after another.

Besides, he and Ellie have a whole _thing_ , banter wise, going on about cigarettes and smoking. She's less likely to slip into it as a habit and deal with actual damage than she is if he'd helped her drown her sorrows or whatever. They've done enough drinking, lately.

Never mind that getting drunk on a roof's a pretty good way to die stupidly.

(He's not helping her with _that_ , either.)

So, here they are, hurting and smoking and staring up at the sky like it can keep whatever answers it has and shove the ones it doesn't.

It's the first time in weeks that Magnus has managed to really hang out with her again.

He's not great at comfort, but he can do shared bitterness. And if Ellegaard wants to get poetic, he'll listen, though even grief won't keep him from giving less poetic responses.

"Hearts are fickle things. They seem to break at the slightest shove. I’d much rather give mine away."

It's a whole lot of anguish, jaded and weary, that he's never heard in her voice before, despite all the other messes they've gotten into before, the less than stellar backgrounds they crawled out of.

(Not that he can’t relate to what she’s saying, because the desire to crawl off to some remote, desolate tower and stay there is strong.)

So Magnus does what he does best, blowing a smoke ring that wobbles and dissolves into the darker splotches of night when she hands him the cigarette and shrugging as he gives an offhand comment that's surprisingly hard not to mumble.

"Well, I wouldn’t mind having yours..."

There's a dumb thought that goes with that, something right out of Gabriel's latest speech to their adoring 'fans', embodying stupid chivalry and valor like it means something when it comes from people like them.

The dumb thought is that, if Magnus had her heart, he could at least try to keep it safe. He wants to keep all their hearts safe, like that's possible. Like they'd ever let him. He's a griefer who breaks things, time after time, but deep down he just wants to take the shards of their strained and broken friendships and fix them back up.

That's Ellie's job, though, fixing things up or making them useful.

Magnus wants chaos, because it's his nature, but the pain of the last few weeks has been nothing short of awful. It's change, sure, at what cost? This isn't fun change or his brand of hectic shenanigans, the kind Gabriel used to help him with while Ellegaard shrieked at their heels.

He wants to fix what they broke, but he's never been able to undo a TNT blast before. Now doesn't seem any different.

"Seriously?" She's looking at him, really looking _at_ him in a way she hasn't since he got her up here. The raised eyebrow and disbelieving tone would make him more defensive if he hadn't been desperate for a response that wasn't entirely negative.

He offers her the smoke again, crushing the lit end against one of the roof's many carved stone edges when she shakes her head.

"I mean, yeah. You've already got mine."

And it's the truth, the exhausted truth at the heart of their years of bonding and bickering and living. Ivor leaving, Soren lying, (almost) all of them selling their souls for fame and glory- it's stripped back each and every layer of Magnus and his usual defenses. What's the point in denying it, when they're this close to losing whatever it is they've got?

"...you're sappy, tonight."

"'m tired." Tired of what? Winning nothing, losing everything? Because that's what's happened. Sure, technically they've got far more now than they ever could've had before, at the price of them getting all the credit for something they never did. It's an empty, shallow victory that burns in his throat and his chest. It came at the price of losing Ivor. Losing their snarky healer, their friend who was perhaps the most excited for their adventure and the most carefully prepared, hurts them as a team and cuts to the heart of who they are as friends.

Who they _were_ as friends might be a better way to put it.

(It came at the price of all their friendships, really, who they are- who they _used_ to be.

Gabe's been in a daze- who isn’t?- but he's stiffer too, formal in a way Magnus's fellow trouble maker never is. This new Gabriel’s somewhere between a warrior and a knight. The crowd loves him. Magnus just feels sicker listening to him, his speeches and his new habit of saying no to everything fun. Gabriel's chivalrous, sure, but he's also Magnus's friend, not this stressed out hollow shell with an empty smile and dramatic speeches for crowds spun from nothing but despair and grief.

It turns out that _is_ who he is, now.

And if _Gabe's_ in a daze, there's no real way to describe what's going on with Soren. Soren had his head in the clouds to start with. He’s gotten, forced, everything he’s ever wanted, except Ivor isn’t here to drag him from his room into the open. Everything they dreamed of is at their feet, minus the integrity. Soren, already running on no sleep and manic energy during that uneasy time after the Dragon was 'defeated' but _before_ Ivor left, has shut himself away almost entirely.

Can't disappoint or lie to people you don't see or talk to.

Ellie too, because of course she squirreled herself away, because she and Soren are two sides of the same coin the way she and Ivor are- _were_. It’s worked just as well for her as it does for him. Even without Magnus's interference, she's been doing little more than slipping up and burning her own fingers on her machines. She stares out windows and mumbles nothing to an empty room. She'd still be in that room if Magnus hadn't managed to coax her onto the roof like this, the promise of familiar company better than hanging out with those in the camp under them.

There are other engineers here to talk to, now, but what's the point?

Magnus himself, well... he's partied, he's feasted, and he's hated himself all the more for it. He chose this over defending Ivor; he was the first to follow Soren’s lead and pick their pretty lie over the rusted truth. Magnus is the one who couldn’t even look Ivor in the eye. He'd like to think he's at least trying to have fun, being truer to himself than Gabriel is, but that doesn't mean he isn't sickened by every fake grin and overblown guffaw, every bit of fun at the unsuspecting crowd’s expense. It’s his worst prank yet.

They're coping, maybe, but it ain't healthy. None of this is.)

Ellegaard sighs, a curled lock of hair brushing against her cheek as the wind toys with it, the rest held back only by her goggles, and she’s so strikingly beautiful it hurts.

It just ain’t fair.

Still, she also sounds achingly drained, circles under her eyes as bold as he’s ever seen them.

"...so am I."

Nowhere to take the conversation from that, is there? That's what it all comes down to.

They’re washed up before they could ever really begin.

And if the conversation can't continue, then it's time to move things along before they _do_ end up breaking out the alcohol. Magnus pushes himself to his feet with energy he doesn't have, stretching his arms above his head before cracking his neck the way Ellie usually hates.

The breeze picked up at some point, though hell if he knows when, and the stone roof's cold enough to have leeched all the warmth from his hands _and_ his ass.

"Great. We might as well crash- I'm sick of staring at the big ol' empty."

This is, of course, Ellegaard's cue to lecture him on how beautifully vast and amazingly full space is, how it's hardly empty and that the hollowest space to crack jokes about is in his head.

She doesn't, but she does smile.

It's weak, but it's the first smile in at least a week that hasn't looked totally plastic.

On top of that, she hands him the mask he'd almost left on the roof, an easy victim for the breeze, and he's hardly thinking when he takes it in a balled up fist as they both slip back through the window they came onto the roof from.

(Not that he hasn’t been thinking about replacing this mask.

It’s almost half stitches now, the victim of all the repairs it’s needed since he first made it, back when they started out their training and the world looked so beautifully big and unknown.

...his later stitches are much better than the first few repairs, on account of Ivor showing him neater stitches and making Magnus practice them.

They work for skin _and_ cloth, as it turns out.

That might be a little more important now, since they’re down a healer and Ivor was the one who kept inventory of the healing potions.)

The walk through the halls is almost peaceful, on account of it being short and the others hiding in their own rooms or making speeches outside or chasing after Endermen in an empty End or whatever they’re each doing (because whatever Soren and Gabriel are doing, they’re doing it alone and Magnus knows it), and Ellegaard’s shoulders are relaxed like they haven’t been in over a month.

So far, so decent.

He's no Ivor, but Magnus is still doing his best to fill in as the glue.

It's working better than he figured it would; griefers aren't meant to be the glue of anything, never mind horribly fractured friend groups.

And, hell, while he's patting his back for a job well done, Magnus'll take an extra second to preen about how surprisingly easy it was to get Ellie to crash in his room instead of hers, and, heck, he's even proud (and sad and confused and exhausted) about how his room is actually the healthier choice.

Going from the window to his room means they don’t pass Ivor’s door.

(The long shadows cast by the torches can’t be helped, gnarled into shapes that are almost human and hauntingly familiar against the stone bricks, fire and shadows alike wavering as the two of them walk by.)

In Magnus’s room, there aren't any machines for her to tinker with, none out in the open, anyway, to be obsessed over like there are in hers.

She can’t keep herself up all night doing nothing.

There aren't any pipes or wires to fuss over like her next invention will prove Ivor wrong or bring him back.

He's not even dead -probably- and it feels like they've lowered the casket already.

(Ivor's resourceful, practical, skilled, and _alone_. He can take care of himself just fine, fend for himself as he does who knows what with the treasures he bargained for, but he shouldn't have to.

None of them should.

Magnus thinks of an exhausted Ivor, holed up in a dirt hut somewhere or already dead in a ditch, and he shifts the arm around Ellie’s shoulders so it’s closer to a squeeze.

If he's got any say in this, cowardly as he is and weak-willed as he's been shown to be, it won't happen to the rest of them, drift apart as they may. He wants to be _there_ for them, in this twisted lie they’ve trapped themselves in, be available even when he's busy with whatever chaos he and his followers cobble together.

Gods, he has _followers_ now, fans who think the world of him.

He's gonna be sick.)

Magnus's armor is already kicked into a forgotten corner, left alone unless he's making an appearance for 'the public' that seemed to spring up overnight.

It’s his clumsiest way at trying to fix what he helped shatter. It hasn’t helped much; the others wear their armor more than ever and always around him, Ellegaard only taking hers off now to chuck it on top of his.

Falling into bed is easy, something from Before that isn't instantly painful or miserable, and so's peppering each other with kisses as they settle under the covers. It's easy to slip into the familiar position, her arms wrapped around him and her chin on his shoulder.

( _Hey_ , it's not just because he's short.

Magnus is the damned best little spoon there's ever been.)

Ellie goes a step further than just silently settling into what's familiar, though, whispering in a voice that isn't pained as he cranes his neck to kiss her cheek.

"Thanks for holding onto my heart."

Fat lot of good it's doing either of them, with how much hers still hurts and how much it can still be hurt, but the thought has to count for something. She's kind enough to do the same for him.

"Yeah, well, don't go throwing mine around."

It means a lot, given how easy it ultimately was for them to chuck Ivor's away and turn their backs on him. Magnus still can't really believe that happened, or that anybody else in their group would be willing to do that to _him_ , never mind brilliant Ellie- but here they are, short a healer, short a friend, and short on all the trust they'd had in spades before they entered the End, and Magnus would be a fool to not take the blame for being one of the first to toss all that. Why wouldn’t they turn on him after how quickly he turned on Ivor?

There's a spiky, prickly paranoia nestled in the back of his mind that wasn't there before, but he still trusts Ellegaard, and he means it when he silently promises himself he won't throw away whatever trust she's got left in him.

And for a minute, as they sink into sleep, it almost feels alright.

They're both stubborn people, and they've never been the types to give up on a challenge, even one that aches.


End file.
